Transforming Audio Signals Captured in Different Formats into a Reduced Number of Formats for Simplifying Encoding and Decoding Operations

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the simplification stage comprises one or more computer processors a computer processor.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the spatial mezzanine format includes a representation as m Objects and n-th order HOA (“mObj+HOAn”), where m and n are low integer numbers.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the encoding stage is an immersive voice and audio services (IVAS) compliant processing stage.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein converting the audio signal into the spatial mezzanine format comprises generating metadata for the audio signal, wherein the metadata comprises a representation of a portion of the audio signal.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising transmitting the encoded audio signal by transmitting the metadata that comprises the representation of the portion of the audio signal.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the spatial mezzanine format represents the audio signal as a number of audio objects in an audio scene both of which are relying on a number of audio channels for carrying spatial information.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the spatial mezzanine format further comprises metadata for carrying a further portion of spatial information.

12. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 5, wherein the spatial mezzanine format includes a representation as m Objects and n-th order HOA (“mObj+HOAn”), where m and n are low integer numbers.

13. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 5, wherein the encoding stage is an immersive voice and audio services (IVAS) compliant processing stage.

14. The system of claim 6, wherein the spatial mezzanine format includes a representation as m Objects and n-th order HOA (“mObj+HOAn”), where m and n are low integer numbers.

15. The system of claim 6, wherein the encoding stage is an immersive voice and audio services (IVAS) compliant processing stage.

17. The system of claim 6, wherein converting the audio signal into the spatial mezzanine format comprises generating metadata for the audio signal, wherein the metadata comprises a representation of a portion of the audio signal.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising transmitting the encoded audio signal by transmitting the metadata that comprises the representation of the portion of the audio signal.

19. The system of claim 6, wherein the spatial mezzanine format represents the audio signal as a number of audio objects in an audio scene both of which are relying on a number of audio channels for carrying spatial information.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the spatial mezzanine format further comprises metadata for carrying a further portion of spatial information.